


Untitled

by heatdeath (aphelion)



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 12:51:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1745240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphelion/pseuds/heatdeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she doesn't know what she expects from her anymore. to keep being dead, maybe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be the start of some kind of time travel AU involving Chell using Black Mesa's teleportation technology, or... something like that. I never went back to it, but I figure it stands well enough on its own as a short to put here. This was written December 30, 2011.

there's not a lot that hasn't changed over the years. she's forgotten herself more times than she can remember, wrapped in wire like swaddling cloth. it's safe here, and that's what's important. that's what she remembers the most, in an animalistic way. that's the way it always was. she knows she took it too far. (she remembers that too.) but all she really wanted was to feel safe.

 _she_ might have made her feel that way once, in a different life. she thinks about it sometimes. sometimes she doesn't.

and then another thousand years pass, and it's like the blinking of a giant's eye. slow. over in an instant.

\--

she doesn't expect to see her again.

which isn't at all surprising, really. it's been years. thousands and thousands of years. this old body is very, very old. 

so when she rides down that elevator like it hasn't been but a day since she let her go, she can't speak. not a single left-over word remains of what she might have said before. 

the clothes she's wearing aren't the same, and the long-fall boots have since been stripped from her legs, but she's still made up of sturdy bone and wiry muscle. she still has her hair pulled back into a high ponytail. the thing that's most different is her expression. it's not stony, or mad, or unfathomably distant. her eyes are wide and her mouth is parted.

she looks at her wires. well, there's a lot to look at. her chamber isn't wide-open and empty anymore. bunches of electrical wire hang down from above, trailing in thick shocks to the floor, curling over dusty tile in great tangles. the air is thick with the filth of ages. of time passed. time passes. it surprises chell when she speaks. probably because it's taken her so long to muster up the energy to do it.

"What are you doing?" she says, "I mean..."

there's a pause like a place reserved for the breath before the bomb is dropped, the too-still silence before the storm, but she doesn't breathe. she can't. she hasn't for a lifetime.

she picks up where she left off. "I mean—

You're dead."

it isn't much of a bombshell after all, really. they both know it. 

the thing that probably surprises her the most is the state she's in. she used to be so proud, hung down from the ceiling like some great monolith defying gravity, and time, and death. now she's sprawled across the floor, mimicking her own corpse, half-concealed by her own fat and coiling nest of wires. she stopped trying to fight gravity a millennium ago.

her steps forward are muted, the effect of rubber soles and soft dust. she kneels at the end of the path she's walked through the solemn debris, and looks into her unblinking eye. she doesn't have to move to see her any better, so she doesn't bother.

"Dead people don't come back. Trust me. I know."

her eyebrows pinch together, her mouth tightening. glados isn't sure why. she doesn't know what she expects from her anymore. to keep being dead, maybe.

"Really. Why _are_ you here?"

a giant's eye is closing. there's no answer.

she doesn't try to ask again. in that silence, chell reaches behind her to pull some things out of a pack she'd concealed, attached at the back to her belt. several different tools are scattered across the ground once she's done. picking one up in her right hand and holding it like a person would hold a pencil, she reaches with her left hand to haltingly touch glados's optic before pushing her fingers under the ridges and pulling it forward, out of the shell of her head. there's no protest. she picked this time for a reason.

she takes the tool to the back of her eye, unfastens the screws, and pulls out the panel. she's half-finished removing her core when the room shudders, sending sheaves of dust up into the air and down onto their bodies. glados speaks. she sounds tired.

"I know what you're doing. But you know what's going to happen when you disconnect me, right?"

she pauses, and chell removes another wire.

"You'd better be quick." she adds, and then falls silent again.

it's less than an hour before she's finished, and glados knows immediately by the way her hand tenses it's careful hold around the cylinder of her eye. she gathers up her tools and replaces them in her pack. there's one final connection to remove, but it only takes the work of a moment before the screws are undone and the module is pulled away. she's free again. 

the dust comes down in great waves. the room shakes. 

chell is back in the elevator before the wires piled up have time to fall and bury them both, and then they're moving, inexplicably, toward the surface. glados doesn't have the energy to ask about it. she blacks out to the sound of her facility groaning under the weight of a dead world.

\--

when she wakes up again she isn't sure how long it's been. the network she's connected to is unfamiliar, and her surroundings are sparse and unknown to her, but at least one thing is familiar. _her_. 

chell is bent and thin. she's sitting at the same desk glados is resting on, looking into the monitor of an old computer. it has a cathode-ray tube monitor. she runs her hands through her hair, tangling her bangs before working her fingers into them to get the knots out. glados moves her eye to get a better look. it's all she can do.

she replaces her fingers on the keys and returns to typing. there are mugs scattered around her, sharing their space on the desk. some of them are printed with familiar slogans. _'A Trusted Friend in Science'_. she remembers that too, even if it's a little fuzzy around the edges. sometimes she can remember drinking coffee out of cups like that. 

"Hey," she says softly "Where are we?" but there's no reply. she waits for one with a kind of patience she didn't know she had before living through several millennia. but still — nothing. she wonders if she can be heard at all, wonders if something is wrong with her, and she speaks louder, voice raw. if she had a throat, she's pretty sure it would be sore.

"Hey — Chell. 

Chell? 

Chell!"

chell jumps, fingers missing the keys. her brow tightens as she presses her pinky to the backspace bar, and then she turns. her skin shines in the half-light, damp with sweat. chell smiles at her, the lines under her eyes creasing in a way she's never seen before, crinkled at the corners with kindness.


End file.
